Apple faces $600m damages claim • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple faces $600m damages claim

#31

Post by raganwald » Tue, Oct 05, 2010, 2:47 PM UTC

IgorPartola wrote: post #25

unexpected wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even think you should receive a patent unless you intend to commercialize it. In this system, you have incentives to make your patent as broad as possible, as well as look for "me-too" patents that you can get by studying existing ones. If your sole source of revenue is licensing the patents that you've created, you're a patent troll. The initial patent wasn't intended for this. The patent wasn't originally i…

Are you telling me that if I come up with a way to build a cold fusion reactor, start to finish, that is commercially viable but will cost me $1,000,000,000,000 to build but can power the entire human civilization, my only option is to either build it or forget it? That if I obtain a patent it is somehow my obligation to actually make the damn thing? Also, how do you propose the patent office make sure that I am actu…

Are you telling me that if I come up with a way to build a cold fusion reactor, start to finish, that is commercially viable but will cost me $1,000,000,000,000 to build but can power the entire human civilization, my only option is to either build it or forget it? That if I obtain a patent it is somehow my obligation to actually make the damn thing?

I have no idea what he(?) is telling you, but I'm telling you YES. The problem here is that you couch it as coming up wit the whole thing from start to finish. Think instead of how many hundreds or THOUSANDS of patents might cover a commercially viable cold fusion reactor.

Imagine if NONE of the patent holders want to invest a few billion to build it, they each wait around for some other sucker to invest a billion dollars and then try to "extract value" with their patent trolling lawsuits.

Result? No cold fusion for humanity, because nobody wants to invest a billion dollars building something that requires permission from hundreds or thousands of venal "inventors."

It is obvious that we do not need patents to protect the creation of a billion dollar reactor. The billion dollar cost to build one protects it. If you come up with the idea, but you don't have a billion dollars, do what everyone else is doing, go pitch it and raise money. If you don't have a billion dollars and you can't convince anyone else to give you a billion dollars, why should you get rich?

There is no moral imperative to reward inventors for pure thinking, and furthermore there is NO evidence at the moment that patents serve as an incentive to get smart people like you to invent cold fusion instead of making money trading derivatives or playing professional poker.

Re: Apple faces $600m damages claim

#32

Post by marknutter » Tue, Oct 05, 2010, 3:02 PM UTC

jcl wrote: post #27

gruseom wrote: post #22

I find it hard to believe that Gelernter's work played any role in the creation of Apple's products. I've read some of his stuff (admittedly unrelated) and the thing that leapt out at me was how hard it would be to do anything with it. (Edit: frankly, I don't think it's all that hard to sit around "inventing" things if all you have to do is write about them and never back them up with real products. Research prototyp…

Be careful of what you wish for, though. Powerful companies would most likely lobby for changes to patent law that benefit powerful companies. For example, they might lobby to require the invention be a "real product", defined as N x 100,000 units or $N million dollars revenue. While that would eliminate patent trolls, it would also destroy small companies and individual inventors.

Why exactly would that destroy small companies or individual inventors?

Re: Apple faces $600m damages claim

#33

Post by unexpected » Tue, Oct 05, 2010, 3:03 PM UTC

IgorPartola wrote: post #25

unexpected wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even think you should receive a patent unless you intend to commercialize it. In this system, you have incentives to make your patent as broad as possible, as well as look for "me-too" patents that you can get by studying existing ones. If your sole source of revenue is licensing the patents that you've created, you're a patent troll. The initial patent wasn't intended for this. The patent wasn't originally i…

Are you telling me that if I come up with a way to build a cold fusion reactor, start to finish, that is commercially viable but will cost me $1,000,000,000,000 to build but can power the entire human civilization, my only option is to either build it or forget it? That if I obtain a patent it is somehow my obligation to actually make the damn thing? Also, how do you propose the patent office make sure that I am actu…

If you could build a cold fusion reactor (and let's say you get only one patent from it), wouldn't people be begging for you to build it? If you could turn your patent into VC funding, had proven it in the lab, and were actively seeking investors for it, then yes you deserve the patent.

If you can't do any of those things, is the patent worth anything? Maybe it's cost prohibitive - maybe, in that instance it would be better to turn over the idea to humanity - maybe someone can run with it and make a commercially viable idea for $500,000,000, instead.

This is a bit of a strawman's argument - something this revolutionary would involve a thousand incremental steps, along with a thousand potential revenue streams along the way. If you can't produce a viable business from the idea, aside from the patent itself, is the idea really that revolutionary to begin with?

Re: Apple faces $600m damages claim

#34

Post by orangecat » Tue, Oct 05, 2010, 3:11 PM UTC

lkjuhygthyujk wrote: post #7

jcromartie wrote: post #3

It's unbelievable that a company that doesn't even have a website can win a suit like this. For Apple to have caused "Mirror Worlds" any harm, they would have to be competing with each other. For Mirror Worlds to compete with ANYBODY , a good start would be appearing to be a real business in any way shape or form. Maybe I don't really understand patent law, but David Gelernter just sounds like a total scumbag here. I…

I don't think you understand the difference between a patent troll and an IP company. The company I work for designs antennae for cell phones, wifi, GPS receivers etc. We barely have a website, just a couple of PhDs and a lawyer. We rely on licencing our designs and file a lot of patents. It's judgements like this that stop cell phone makers deciding that it's cheaper to just copy our inventions than pay us a licence…

It's judgements like this that stop cell phone makers deciding that it's cheaper to just copy our inventions than pay us a licence fee.

When they "copy" your "inventions", are they actually reading your patents and building exactly the same thing? Or are they solving the problem in a way that is straightforward for skilled engineers, thereby producing a design that resembles yours even though they've never seen it? If it's the latter, and you're suing them for it, then yes, you're working for a patent troll.

Re: Apple faces $600m damages claim

#35

Post by kenjackson » Tue, Oct 05, 2010, 3:25 PM UTC

unexpected wrote: post #33

IgorPartola wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you telling me that if I come up with a way to build a cold fusion reactor, start to finish, that is commercially viable but will cost me $1,000,000,000,000 to build but can power the entire human civilization, my only option is to either build it or forget it? That if I obtain a patent it is somehow my obligation to actually make the damn thing? Also, how do you propose the patent office make sure that I am actu…

If you could build a cold fusion reactor (and let's say you get only one patent from it), wouldn't people be begging for you to build it? If you could turn your patent into VC funding, had proven it in the lab, and were actively seeking investors for it, then yes you deserve the patent. If you can't do any of those things, is the patent worth anything? Maybe it's cost prohibitive - maybe, in that instance it would be…

The problem is that no one would believe you. And since you don't have any IP protection, the second you showed off anything of real interest (to prove you could do it), they could simply steal the idea at that point.

Re: Apple faces $600m damages claim

#36

Post by unexpected » Tue, Oct 05, 2010, 3:25 PM UTC

commandar wrote: post #24

unexpected wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even think you should receive a patent unless you intend to commercialize it. In this system, you have incentives to make your patent as broad as possible, as well as look for "me-too" patents that you can get by studying existing ones. If your sole source of revenue is licensing the patents that you've created, you're a patent troll. The initial patent wasn't intended for this. The patent wasn't originally i…

>If your sole source of revenue is licensing the patents that you've created, you're a patent troll. Isn't that essentially ARM's business model?

I don't include ARM in this list b/c they actually market their products and their whole business model revolves around taking the "headache" out of the R&D of chip design.

ARM aggressively markets their products and chip designs, showing benchmarks of their technologies. Most patent trolls fly under the radar, trying not to get noticed, so a major corporation can violate the patent in a huge, best-selling product. Then, they can claim "well, you should have checked all available technologies" - which is a huge waste of effort.

There's no incentive for patent trolls to aggressively market their products, b/c that doesn't bring the biggest returns. Look at this suit that just went against Apple - if Apple had negotiated a long-term license with them back in 2004, it would have been on really bad terms - no one knew that the iPhone would be this successful (except for maybe Apple).

There are perverse incentives in place to try and "hide" the patent as much as possible, and then wait for the biggest fish to show up. One really big fish is worth a thousand smaller fish, and when a really big fish falls, it discourages all the small fish from entering the marketplace all together - to the detriment of everyone.

Re: Apple faces $600m damages claim

#37

Post by phamilton » Tue, Oct 05, 2010, 3:34 PM UTC

raganwald wrote: post #31

IgorPartola wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you telling me that if I come up with a way to build a cold fusion reactor, start to finish, that is commercially viable but will cost me $1,000,000,000,000 to build but can power the entire human civilization, my only option is to either build it or forget it? That if I obtain a patent it is somehow my obligation to actually make the damn thing? Also, how do you propose the patent office make sure that I am actu…

Are you telling me that if I come up with a way to build a cold fusion reactor, start to finish, that is commercially viable but will cost me $1,000,000,000,000 to build but can power the entire human civilization, my only option is to either build it or forget it? That if I obtain a patent it is somehow my obligation to actually make the damn thing? I have no idea what he(?) is telling you, but I'm telling you YES.…

As much as I dislike facebook and Zuckerberg, I like his quote: "If you had invented facebook, you would have invented facebook."

So you figured out how to build a cold fusion reactor. If you had done that you would have built a cold fusion reactor.

If one looked only at sweat equity, I'd wager that the creation and invention of the product in your average million-dollar-revenue company is dwarfed by everything else that needs to be done.

Re: Apple faces $600m damages claim

#38

Post by kenjackson » Tue, Oct 05, 2010, 3:39 PM UTC

natch wrote: post #21

glhaynes wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps they actually invent and design useful things and then license them.

Good answer and I agree with it, but most of the time these ideas are invented and reinvented many times, easily, and they should not be protected by the government. You can describe a problem to a six year old and they can come up with patentable inventions that solve the problem. This says more about our patent system than it does about six year olds.

If an idea is obvious then it is not patentable (in theory). Additionally, if there is prior art that captures the claims then it should also not be patentable. I feel like patent law covers this pretty well.

The big problem to me are patents, common in software, that do the following:

1) They target a new problem that didn't exist before.

2) Have a trivial solution to this new problem.

3) Then one can claim that this patent is non-obvious since no one else has done this before.

The interesting thing is not the actual patent, but the problem it is solving. In SW this happens because the industry changes so quickly, but the patented ideas are obvious, its just that the problems are new.

I propose that we add a new test to patentability -- prior art that this problem has been attempted or struggled with. Thus if your solution is the first one to ever been attempted on a given problem its defacto non-patentable.

A quick example is in order: SMS comes out with 148 character limits. Someone then instantly patents URL shorteners to fit in the 148 character limit. Patent denied as there is no prior attempted solutions or struggles fitting URLs in it. (Note, if the patenter can find articles written by practitioners about how SMS is not useful because of link lengths then that would be applicable as prior attempt).

Re: Apple faces $600m damages claim

#39

Post by borism » Tue, Oct 05, 2010, 3:53 PM UTC

marknutter wrote: post #32

jcl wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be careful of what you wish for, though. Powerful companies would most likely lobby for changes to patent law that benefit powerful companies. For example, they might lobby to require the invention be a "real product", defined as N x 100,000 units or $N million dollars revenue. While that would eliminate patent trolls, it would also destroy small companies and individual inventors.

Why exactly would that destroy small companies or individual inventors?

because achieving 100k units or 1M in revenue in short period of time is beyond their abilities, duh?

Re: Apple faces $600m damages claim

#40

Post by _emice » Tue, Oct 05, 2010, 3:57 PM UTC

The article on Arstechnica noted at similarities between the infringement and the functionality of HyperCard, which shipped on all Macs in 1987. Hypercard used stacks of cards that had some shared some aspects with a group, but individual cards could also have unique elements. These included text fields, GUI elements and background images. I haven't looked at the patent, but owning the ability to - display records/documents in a virtual pile, possibly in chronological order, with the ability to scroll through them - sounds absurd to me.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/10/apple-loses-patent...